Phantom Islands

Dirk Liesemer  (translated Peter Lewis)

Haus Publishing

£14.99

In this elegantly-produced, quietly quirky book. Dirk Liesemer presents brief histories of thirty islands that have appeared on maps and inspired explorations: Atlantis, Breasil, Saint Brendan’s Island, Rupes Nigra, Thule. Several have shifted their charted position over the centuries but none of them exist. (One may even have been a squashed fly, caught in the process of digitization, yet, in 2012, requiring a survey ship and twenty scientists to prove its non-existence.) Liesemer’s overall themes are the provisional nature of knowledge and the power of wanting to believe. There are blank pages in this volume which might have tempted me to sharpen a very fine pencil and sketch my own. Instead I contented myself with the unobtrusively good writing and perceptive insights.